by Leigh Witchel
The National Ballet of Canada made its first visit to New York City in 15 years, bringing essentially a new company. There had been an almost complete turnover of dancers since then, as well as a new Artistic Director, Hope Muir. It was clear from the programming that the company wanted to display its current capability in both classical and contemporary work.
Crystal Pite’s “Angels’ Atlas” made its debut in 2020 right before the pandemic shutdown, and a documentary of it was released two years later. This was its United States debut. It capped the evening in a visual tour de force. How you felt about the piece in front of the lighting was less surefire.
The curtain rose on darkness and a recorded ethereal choir. Behind was the phenomenal lighting effect by Jay Gower Taylor and Tom Visser. It resembled an aurora and was projected on the cyclorama. The immense cast of dancers (39 were listed), all wearing long pants with cut legs, lay supine on the ground then moved in unison phrases, reaching and turning.
Siphesihle November and Hannah Galway performed a frantic duet of reaching and spasms, or she stood above him, grieving. Pite went for massive effects: half the stage lay down, while the other half pulsed and resonated to a high-pitched hum and a low thump by Owen Belton. The soundtrack returned to liturgical music, but the dancing stuck with thrashing en masse and running off in groups.
Whatever music it was from liturgical to electronic, Pite used it like wallpaper. The choral music by Tchaikovsky and Morten Lauridsen seemed disconnected from the action that happened as it played.
Galway and November returned for another duet of seemingly deep emotions that came out of nowhere. It invoked the query of choreography workshop leaders everywhere: “who are these people?” November held Galway’s head as she finally came to rest and the music stilled. Others came out to surround them in the silence until they filled the whole stage. The Tchaikovsky resumed and the cast went from a free-form amoeba to everyone falling to the floor as if asleep.
More stuff happened. A solo, then rolling, then a unison section, all to liturgical music used as a soundtrack, not an impulse. Everyone raced in for yet more monolithic unison. A woman got carried. The piece returned to November and Galway as the others walked off. The two embraced, collapsing at the end.
The dancers seemed inspired by the work; November looked tons better in this than he did in “Concerto,” where his lines seemed wonky. If you didn’t care about a whole, “Angels’ Atlas” was fabulous. But if you did, it was just one damn thing after another.
It’s almost always a challenge to set a dance to liturgical music, because it doesn’t need choreography. For Pite that wasn’t an issue, you could have swapped any of her musical choices and it would have had no effect on the piece. To add insult to injury, as they often do, the City Center speakers sounded horrible during the Pite, vibrating the auditorium fixtures because of the bass-heavy recording. But the music was not something Pite reacted to, it was the background noise for one massive, eye-popping lighting effect.
Kenneth MacMillan’s “Concerto” was made to Shostakovich’s second piano concerto in 1966, 42 years before “Concerto DSCH” was made by Alexei Ratmansky on New York City Ballet. We see the latter in New York more, and it’s good to recall the MacMillan came first. Compared to the breakneck pace at NYCB, Toronto’s performance of “Concerto” seemed to be taken at a walk. And the Canadians felt as if they were wearing not custom tailoring, but someone else’s clothing.
In “Concerto,” all of MacMillan’s Ashtonisms that he exhibited in earlier works, such as “Danses Concertantes,” were gone. “Concerto” was made for Ballet of the Deutsche Opera in Berlin, a young company that MacMillan had just assumed the directorship of and was trying to push. The ballet was straight, didactic classicism: the better to see you with, my dear.
That exposure wasn’t sitting well here. Often the principals had less than textbook arms, or were stiff. In the ballet’s finale, with the leads streaking across and a contingent of men appearing, the distorted lines that seemed part of the style in the contemporary ballets looked as if the dancers couldn’t sustain their schooling. It felt as if Tina Pereira did the big adagio role created on Lynn Seymour by rote, not changing her pained ballerina face at all.
But Peng-Fei Jiang handled Pereira well in the lifts and carries of the central pas de deux; she ended cantilevered over, looking at him. MacMillan’s conception of the central duet was much more traditional than Ratmansky’s. In “DSCH,” Ratmansky hinted at a community; MacMillan created a nocturne. Another comparison: when the Royal Ballet School brought the duet to New York the duet was lit with a huge fiery sunset. This staging seemed to be in the oblique, cooler orange light of a northern sky – twilight at Muskoka.
Perhaps the uneven performance was just opening night jitters, or just bad luck. The floor was also slippery; a few spills happened in the same spot.
The program opened more strongly with “Anima Animus,” a ballet made in 2018 for San Francisco Ballet, to a score by Ezio Bosso. You could tell without looking at the program the piece was by David Dawson – the bright white stage and the dancers with their spines arched to lengthen their limbs gave it away. Yumiko Takeshima’s interesting costumes were divided front to back: the front colored in black, white or gray, the back flesh-toned.
To plangent strings, Dawson arrayed the cast in neat lines of four, moving them laterally over and over. There were a lot of entrances and exits, and sliding along the floor on point seems to have become an important skill. The first movement spun to an end; the men arched and reached to open the second.
Calley Skalnik and Genevieve Penn Nabity might have been cast because they looked from the house like sisters. One of them was passed among the men. She didn’t look like cargo though, more of a dreaming, lunar figure. One trio passed into another. A lot of toting and carrying culminated in a striking double torch lift. Dawson was aiming for a stage picture, and he got it; the men were capable of arduous partnering.
Skalnik and Nabity danced a double solo that led into more trios, all with fluid phrasing and long lines. The section ended with Nabity pressed overhead.
After all the blondness, a brunette danced a solo; the other women followed her to strings that sounded like an angry hive. The finale was for the full cast passing one another, with the women lifted and swung around. They came towards us, forming a line and flexed their wrists on the final notes.
“Anima Animus” was as trendy as “Angels’ Atlas” but it was also neatly made and structurally sound. If it looked and sounded as sleek and as ultimately superficial as a car commercial, at least it was for a very expensive car.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“Anima Animus,” “Concerto,” “Angels’ Atlas” – The National Ballet of Canada
New York City Center, New York, NY
March 30, 2023
Cover: Hannah Galway and Siphesihle November in “Angels’ Atlas.” Photo © Karolina Kuras.
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